Jack made sure to lock the dorm before heading off to class, it wouldn't do to leave such a dangerous place unsecured. Not that it was likely that anyone would wander into dorm 13, it was even more dilapidated on the outside. Not a single window on the first floor was intact and the walls looked like they'd cave in at any moment. Still it was home and Jack was fond of it.
He made his way down the path towards the main buildings. The Academy grounds were mostly covered with lush vibrant forest with neatly mown grass instead of the expected layers of leaves and small plants. It was an idyllic morning in late spring with a few light clouds and a refreshing breeze. It was quite possibly the last true spring day before summer set in.
"Hey, Jack!" A sudden shout shattered the peaceful atmosphere. "Hey wait up!"
Jack sighed heavily before slowing down slightly. He recognized the loud enthusiastic voice. It was a classmate from first year. Students were admitted to the Academy after basic tests verifying the integrity of their meridians. Such a simple test eliminated eighty percent of the population due to various critical issues in major meridians or the dantian. Of the remainder that passed a further three quarters had lesser faults and were sent to undergo basic military training before directly joining the Border Defense Force. The top five or so percent of all humans are enrolled in the Academy.
The first year everyone is taught the basics about Magick Beasts, geography and Magick Beast habitation, classes and professions, and Basic Combat. At the end of first year everyone was sorted by Class according to talent, intellect, and interest. The Academy required all students to reach Rank 1 cultivation and integrate into a party before they could be considered graduates.
"I heard you're still top of the Summoner class, if you uphold the Academy's expectations you'll probably end up in my party," his former classmate predicted. "I look forward to working with you."
"Barring unexpected calamities it's fairly likely but grades and promise are only one of the methods used to sort parties. So who knows really, regardless it would be my pleasure to work with you." Jack replied politely.
"You're right of course, compatibility and team composition, but as a summoner you have flexibility and can almost join whatever team you wish." His former classmate countered.
They were correct of course; Summoners were the last class to engrave their first rune and level to Rank 1. Summoners first Runic Sigil was the key to what party they joined, summoners versatility allowed them to more or less choose the party they joined by making their first sigil summon supplement whatever the party they wanted to join might be weak in, usually ranged damage or healing.
"Yes, well I do need to be off to class to make sure everything's in order." Jack somewhat awkwardly brushed off his classmate and continued on to class. His classmate wasn't terribly pleased with his abrupt exit but it was the most important day for summoners and Jack had always been rather brusque so they excused it and left.
_____________________________________________
"Today of as you all know is the deadline to deciding on and preparing for your first summon. At this point you've all had nearly three years to research and practice engraving runes, I expect you all to be fully prepared and there to be no errors. Before you begin you will all tell me what creatures rune you wish to engrave. We'll start with the top of the class, Jack, what do you intend to summon?" Mrs. Mint asked. Mrs. Mint was the Summoning teacher and a Rank 5 summoner herself with her entire left arm engraved with an integrated runic pattern. She was an alumni of Conquest Academy some hundred years ago and come back to teach at the Academy when it became clear she wouldn't be able to break through again.
Breaking through ranks required engraving runes on ones body and engraving runes required essence. Essence needed to be absorbed, purified, and condensed in the dantian before it could be used for runes. The difficult steps were the actual engraving of runes and the high requirements of the later ranks of cultivation. While nearly half of the population could absorb and condense energy very few were able to engrave anything other than the most basic of runes due to a lack of precision or more commonly their innate leakage of essence due to their malformed meridians. The top twenty percent selected by the Remnant's government should all be able to make it to Rank 4 and the Academy's graduates should all make it to Rank 5.
The bottlenecks at Rank 4 and beyond were the precision required during engraving, creativity, and a deep understanding of Runes. Without a flexible and creative mind one would be unable to fit runes together into the working systems required for Rank 4 and beyond. This was Mrs. Mint's problem, while she'd made it to Rank 5 she didn't have the flexibility to make it to Rank 6 and she didn't want to guess and combine runes poorly. There were numerous examples of people who'd combined runes wrong and injured themselves, losing functionality or even whole limbs. Even in the cases where people had succeeded through luck there was no way to progress after that, having randomly combined runes and not knowing why it worked they couldn't combine them with anything else. The few who survived trying had all been terribly injured and lost the limb they'd luckily succeeded on.
"I couldn't find a rune that satisfied me so I want to perform a random summon." Jack calmly stood up and replied. There was a moment of shocked stillness in the room. Random summoning was a fairly basic technique and the rune was simple the problem was when you activated the rune for the first time it would randomly summon a creature and then lock. Each subsequent use of the rune would summon the same creature. While variations of the rune could summon stronger creatures the summoning would still be more or less random no Summoning student would risk summoning something useless. To them Jack's decision could only be arrogance 'because it's me it'll be fine' or some such. Mrs. Mint had similar thoughts but was a bit more open to the idea, Jack was one of the most talented Summoning students she'd ever had surely there was no way it was an ordinary random summoning?
"Explain." She calmly directed.
"Of course it's not a truly random summon, I've modified the rune significantly." Jack replied again perfectly calm. He'd expected such a reaction from the moment he decided to use the random summoning rune. Of course as he'd said it wasn't random anymore, he had designed a rune to search randomly but allow him to choose what was summoned in the end. Of course it wouldn't do to tell anyone that. To join the team he desired a grand public 'failure' was necessary.
"Very well if you're confident in your rune I'll allow it." Mrs Mint decided, displaying her trust in Jack's capabilities. Her trust was well founded, while Jack wasn't the best student she'd ever had his scores in creativity and rune knowledge were off the scale.
The rest of the classes choices were standard and in some cases conservative, it was the first summon they were ever performing and obviously would't be terribly strong, there was no need to do anything risky they only needed to avoid failing so they chose something they were confident they could succeed at. The students began engraving as soon as Mrs Mint approved of their choices.
Jack carefully painted the rune on the back of his left hand the suggested location for every classes first rune, as it was convenient. Some of the more advanced runes wrapped around limbs or went across ones back and required assistance to paint the guide. Jack finished painting the rune around the time the middle of the class were finishing up his guide alone was astonishingly complicated. It was just barely still a 'basic' rune and utilized patterns most of his classmates wouldn't have even recognized let alone known the purpose of.
Runic guides were painted to relieve some of the pressure placed on ones mind while engraving them. The guides would automatically channel essence along them significantly reducing the difficulty and improving the success rate. All the of the students were taught how to engrave runes by painting the rune on vellum and channeling their essence reserves into it. Of course a runic guide could only lessen the burden as while they could automatically channel essence along their lines the cultivator would still have to form the proper three dimensional forms required by runes. Magick students were not only taught how to engrave this way but also how to make one time use 'spell scrolls' with the effects of runes although said effects were lessened they could be used by anyone with a drop of essence by igniting the formation
As he was the top of the class Jack originally would have been first to finish the engraving by channeling his essence through the guide, but since he took so long painting it half of the class had finished and were playing with their first summons. They stopped and started paying attention when Jack walked forward to the summoning space they'd cleared of desks. Jack calmly sat on the edge of the roughly circular clearing and immediately began channeling his essence up from his dantian and into the guide on his hand. He needed to be exceedingly careful and not waste even a drop of essence since the rune he was forming nearly exceeded the capabilities of an un-ranked human. The engraving of runes of their bodies caused a strengthening of their whole bodies and increased the quality of essence refined as well as the dantian's energy storage ability. No one was quite sure how or why such a change took place but no one really cared either, all previous research had utterly failed.
With the extreme care and precision necessary for his custom rune Jack took almost an hour to form the rune and by then the rest of the class had finished and everyone was waiting for him. As he molded the last few lines of the rune it automatically activated and engraved itself into his flesh. Jack could sense dozens of creatures that the rune made temporary contact with and carefully began to study them he needed a creature not just practical but also utterly unimpressive that while functional looked like a failure. Most of the creatures he had contact with were legitimate Magick Beasts unlike the majority of the class who had summoned Wild creatures with small abilities, his rune was undeniably successful but after looking through most of them and not finding something that looked commonplace Jack began to worry.
The top student of each class would generally be put together to form a party which was the most prestigious party every year, of course these parties were very strong and generally quite successful as well. The competition to be top of the class was fierce but Jack was far ahead of his peers. Which was unfortunate for him as he wasn't fond of competition or competitive people much. If he remained top of the class he'd end up in a party with the other class leaders, by anyone's definition the most competitive people in their year. Jack had begun looking for a solution partway through second year when it became clear no one in his class was his equal in runic studies. While he was desperate to avoid being in 'Party no.1' as it was called he refused to slack off in his studies or pretend to fail which forced him to come up with a creative solution.
Finally when he'd just about given up hope he found the perfect creature. Still a Magick Beast but so unimpressive that no one would even think to ask if it was anything but Common: a cow. A muscular bull with fangs that looked like it would make an excellent tank but from a mackical and essence standpoint an ordinary unmagickal cow. With an well concealed smirk he immediately summoned it. There was a brief blissful few seconds of silence before a roaring tide of jeering laughter slammed into him.